i made it to the City of Gold for the first time this week. took several hundred attempts over the span of a few years.

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To access the City of Gold, the player must play through the whole game from the beginning, collecting all of the special ancient Egyptian artifacts from each area:

The Udjat Eye from the Mines. The Ankh from the Black Market in the Jungle. The Hedjet from the Ice Caves. The Scepter from the Temple.

To acquire the Udjat Eye, you must find the Key to unlock the Big Chest. To acquire the Ankh, you must use the Udjat Eye to locate the entrance to the Black Market, use a bomb, Fire Frog or a mattock to reveal it and purchase the item within for $50,000. To acquire the Hedjet, you must locate the Moai and kill yourself anywhere on the level to resurrect inside it, where you will find the item. To acquire the Scepter, you must find and kill Anubis in the temple 4-1.

When you possess both the Hedjet and the Scepter, you must then locate the Golden Door somewhere in the Temple 4-2 to gain entry. The Scepter must be relinquished to open the door, leaving you with only the Udjat Eye and the now-useless Hedjet.

i've liked or loved all Killing Joke's albums .. i thought Absolute Dissent (from 2010) was one of the best they've ever done, and that's saying something. i got the 3 disc In Dub collection (most of which were new mixes by Youth) earlier this year, and it is greaaat. i am a fan, tho - i was even going to go to Jaz's book tour back in August, but that was cancelled. (visa didn't go through or something)

Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth (which totally glitched out when loading the save file from the base game and gave me a few achievements i had never earned due to their incredible difficulty, including Godhead and The Real Platinum God)

I still remember when i played Spyro , Crash Bandicoot maybe u guys know where i can get cheap ps1?

if you're serious, you can get PS1 and PS2 consoles for cheap at the Goodwill - i see them there pretty often now. (actually got an Xbox 360 last year for $24...! it's a first gen, tho. i expect it will RROD some day.)

completed Serious Sam 2 last weekend, so i’ve moved onto Painkiller HD (since one of my original Painkiller discs is damaged). already played through the Halloween DLC and am a quarter-way through the main game - it's significantly shorter than the original.

also i suppose i have to play Costume Quest (which i’m not overly enjoying yet, but it is thematic, so whatever). tried Bulletstorm (not overly enjoying that either).

i thought i was out of Serious Sam for now, but SS: SE HD DLC was on Halloween sale for $0.49, and i didn't have it, so i paid for it with some Steam trading cards. playing on Hard to (artificially?) extend the playtime.

that's great. i dodged the bullet on my secondhand 2011 MBP (it didn't have the faulty nVidia graphics card). for next time, detail the issue(s) you're experiencing in the first post - someone could possibly help out, then.

On the other hand, Wreckfest is still missing a lot but it is an actual game, with races, tracks, AI, drivers, online, etc. Hopefully they get this next big patch out soon, it's also taking way longer than expected.

people on the forums are feeling slighted as the devs seem to have taken to Twitter to post mini-updates. i agree - how hard is it to post a small update in the News sub-forum?

Serious Sam 2: on the final fight against "Mental Institution" (where you fight Mental's whole headquarters/compound/military base/whatever that giant building is). it's you in a little jetcar versus that very well-armed and armored city + the waves of attack/kamikaze aircraft, and it's insta-kill if you leave the car and get hit by anything. such a pain. the epic fights leading up to this on the last level were annoying as well. yes, i like going up against 12 of the humongous mechanical spiders at the same time while a pile of automaton bulls harass you as you're trying to launch enough rockets to take just one of them down.

Serious Sam 2 - i made a lot of progress last week, and am on the penultimate level (on Mental's home planet). in every game in this series, this is the point where they throw everything at you and then some (and is usually much more difficult than the actual final boss itself), so we'll see if i get it done this weekend. some annoying timed levels before this one, ugh.

after this it's either: Painkiller, necroVision or Bulletstorm. not sure yet. will have to see what grabs me.

i didn't start Wasteland 2 last weekend like i said i would. need to get on that.

Serious Sam 2. beat second boss (on the first try), on the third world now, at the midway point. i’m past the terrible part, but the game seems waaaay too easy at times. i would say i should’ve played on Hard difficulty, but i’m not enjoying it THAT much … it’s too bad this game was gimped by Xbox co-development… it could have been so much better. or maybe the level design just is not great. i will say, for a compliment, that there have been a few parts of the soundtrack where the music really was funny and interesting.

what’s next in the shooter queue, after this... probably Painkiller … but original, or HD re-release? there’s also Will Rock, which i could play through for the third time… if i can get it running in Windows 7 64-bit.

had this been two xmases ago, my parents were looking for one and this would have fit the bill. they just needed something for (what's amounted to) kitchen table web-browsing and video conferencing. i helped them pick out some post-holiday, rebate-closeout, low-end HP from Staples, and they now use it way more than the desktop.

having finished Serious Sam: SE HD, i've moved onto Serious Sam 2. it is, unfortunately, still nowhere as good as the first two games... the smaller levels and mediocre-to-poor level design hurt it a lot.

EDIT: Oh, never mind. I just Googled "Exotech Larva" and found out it's Serious Sam.

Serious Sam: Second Encounter. and i just finished the first of the final three levels, so it may well be that i'll reach the end in the next few weeks. i'm using the Serious Sam wiki this time around to find the tougher secrets, which i don't want to miss as there are some funny ones.

ending this weekend on the very last level. currently slogging through the 'Corridor of Death'. every game in this series becomes even less subtle on the final level - it's many hundreds of enemies to take on, over and over. trigger finger is worn out.

the end of the previous level was a perfect example of why i like this series so much - on the way to this castle, you have to fight waves of enemies on a vast ice lake. you can't control your sliding and where you're going very well, but neither can the aliens you're fighting.

also ended up going back to Minecraft on the OO server. this particular server requires the use of like 80 mods, but i'm still having fun with it.

EDIT: Oh, never mind. I just Googled "Exotech Larva" and found out it's Serious Sam.

Serious Sam: Second Encounter. and i just finished the first of the final three levels, so it may well be that i'll reach the end in the next few weeks. i'm using the Serious Sam wiki this time around to find the tougher secrets, which i don't want to miss as there are some funny ones.

game is awesome! clearly inspired by Pac-Man, but makes the whole dot-eating part actually fun (with the addition of more responsive controls, timer-based enemy dispatch, swinging gates and skulls that can kill either the player or the enemy bugs.)

i live in Seattle, so i certainly experience the influx of 40,000 out-of-towners that weekend... the S.O. goes every year. i went two different years (had a free pass each time), and it is a ridiculously-sized convention. even i got overwhelmed - you really do seem to need multiple days to see everything.

this year i went to the indie games expo thing that was not affiliated with PAX. i got the high score of the day on 'Mod Puzzle Game'.

i will be staffing a co-worker's 'sell my junk, er, collectables' table at the Seattle Retro Game Expo in two weeks.

and continuing with Serious Sam: SE. i expect this will take a few more months. taken as a whole, over the last decade and a half since i played the first demo, i think this series turned out to be some of the funnest, most memorable gaming time i've experienced - not bad for what started as a budget title.

(and i always forget that it's impossible to go back to SS: FE after playing this installment, since the original game doesn't have the chainsaw, flamethrower or sniper rifle.)

try unseating and reseating the HDMI cable at both ends (i'm assuming you're using HDMI). also try disconnecting the power brick cable completely and then reattaching at all points.try component video hookup and see what happens.

continuing with Serious Sam SE (HD) - finished FE (HD) a few weeks back. i'm making it a point to complete all the SS games - never finished these in their original incarnations, and the previous computer i had when i got the remakes wasn't good enough to play them at a decent graphics level.. since i won SS3:BFE last year (the prequel), it inspired me to get back into the series. will move onto SS2 after this.

Gratch's comment about "have become very specific in which games we play/have interest in" rings true. in real life, there are some people who are 'gamers' at my job, but with so many games available and people having their own narrowed interests, it's very hard to get anyone to talk about the same thing. just a few weeks ago a guy was trying to get me into some mobile-phone based Korean freemium MMORPG - i was like NO. there's someone who spends all of their non-programming time watching Starcraft gameplay videos. that's really their only interest... pretty much every day for the past five years. i have no real interest in Starcraft, so that avenue of conversation is out. there's a DOTA2 contingent - i don't care about battle arena games either.

so on top of that, i don't play very many AAA big-budget games, so that leaves me out of conversations in general when they do occur. fortunately there is one coworker i can talk to about games like Binding of Isaac or Wreckfest or other indie-ish stuff - everyone else is like 'never heard of it'.

the threads i post on games i'm currently playing tend to drop like a rock, since most other people have not heard of the game, are not interested, or played it years ago.